The best music you're not listening to.™ Reviews of lost classics and obscure titles. Unheralded bands and songwriters. New bands deserving of greater attention. The site for the music omnivore. It's all here, on the Ripple Effect

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Hot on the release of Mr T Experience's first record in 12
years with King Dork Approximately: The Album, a release that wowed the
industry by cleverly releasing the MTX album as an exclusive download with the
release of Frank Portman's King Dork Approximately paperback novel!

Mr T. Experience and Sounds Rad Records are teaming up once
again for the digital release of MTX Shards Volume 1! Shards is a rarities
compilation of hard to find, one off MTX recordings!

While they're at it, the two are also teaming up for a
series of re-issuedclassic MTX shirts
from the past!

Here's the good Doctor himself with more on Shards & the
classic shirts:

"So the tl;dr of this is:we just put up a new, MTX digital album on
iTunes/Amazon/etc.It is volume one of
what will be a two volume set containing all the extra songs that have appeared
on various CDs as bonus tracks but haven't been available in the official
online catalog till now.16 tracks on
each, 32 songs total.It's called Shards
(Vol. 1).(Volume 2 is coming
soon.)

Sounds Radical is offering a package deal where you can
pre-order a limited edition re-issue of the classic MTX Starship T-shirt (with
a pin, sticker, and poster) along with an immediate download of the album.While supplies last!Order on Oct. 31st to get the album download
a day early! If you want in on that go here:http://www.soundsradical.com/store/p33/MTX_Starship_T-Shirt.htmlIt will also, of course, be available on all
the usual services like iTunes, Amazon, spotify, etc.

More:when we first
started putting out records in 1986, the vinyl LP, ep, or 7" was obviously
the main release, the "real" one.When CDs came along, this didn't change. The albums were still side A
and side B of the LP.(For some of us,
regardless of format, they still are, two halves, 20 minutes each or so.)The CDs were seen as an adjunct to the vinyl
version, and, like a lot of bands, we used to pile on any available extra
tracks in a more or less archival spirit without much (or any) thought given to
aesthetic cohesion.The idea was, why
would anyone want to pay more money for a CD of this when you could get a
perfectly good LP -- better give 'em something extra to justify the extra
expense.(Though in some cases it's not
at all clear that these extra tracks added value rather than subtracted it.)

Anyhow, the result was, in the end, a mess, and a blurring
of the line between the albums per se and the morass of extras. (e.g., the
crazy track listing of the Our Bodies Our Selves CD, where the obvious ending
song "Game Over" is succeeded by three cool but random extra tracks
(one of them inexplicably moved from the main album to the end) with
"Swallow Everything" shoehorned in between "More Than
Toast" and "Not Guilty" -- because they were recorded in the
same session? And then there's a hidden
track at the end of a big space of silence after "God Bless America"...
Clearly, the product of a madman, if not several madmen.Yet I know that many people think of this
nutty CD as the actual "real" album.And maybe it should have been, in that some of the crammed-in songs are
many people's favorites.But, it
wasn't.)

So when, in the wake of Lookout's exit, we re-organized the
digital back catalog, we decided to restore the original vinyl track listing
and sequences of the albums, eps, and singles.While many of the CD extras had been b-sides that had been included on
their respective singles in the re-organization, this left out a great many
previously released songs (thirty-two, to be exact.)Some of these were quite "important"
ones too, like "King Dork", "We Are the Future People of
Tomorrow", "Unpack Your Adjectives," as well as a lot of fun
covers and such.The plan was always to
compile these into an Odds 'n' Sods / Relics type album, but what with one
thing and another, that plan hasn't happened till now.

I've tried to arrange the tracks as albums that can be
listened to as such, eight songs to a "side" in the traditional
manner, rather than chronological archives.They are from various sources, (covers comps, out-takes, demos, one live
on the radio song) spanning 1987 thru 1999.The criterion for inclusion when it comes to the out-takes and demos is
simply whether they have already appeared (and subsequently disappeared from)
somewhere.I have however left off the
terrible sounding live cassette recordings that were on the Making Things with
Light CD;they were just messing
everything up like they always have.(They're easy to find if you must have them, and in fact, I can even
sell you a CD if you want one of those:drop me a line at themagnificentdrfrank@gmail.com)As for the demos and out-takes, maybe one day
I'll find the machinery and the gumption to re-examine those tapes and see if
there's anything else interesting on them, but that's for another time if it
ever comes.For now, this is what there
is.You can get the whole thing at once,
or song by song as needed.Or not, as
the case may be.Just putting it out
there, as it were.

Finally, big, heartfelt thanks go to our good friend Pete
Mattern at Planet X Recording Studio for mastering the comp.You'll probably be surprised how good it
sounds, especially considering the sources."

No comments:

Digital Ripple Music Releases Available at Bandcamp!

GET REVIEWED! CONTACT THE RIPPLE

If you're in a band or the industry and you'd like your music to reach a larger audience, send it to us for a review. Contact tseverin@aol.com or send your stuff to The Ripple Effect, 5801 Norris Canyon Road #200, San Ramon, Ca 94583.

LISTEN TO THE RIPPLE EFFECT RADIO SHOW - LIVE AND PODCASTS!

Catch the best music you're not listening to on the Ripple Effect. Now every other week on internet radio. Wednesday night 8-10 pm Ripple (pacific) time. Listen live or download free podcasts! Hit button for details.